After nearly three hundred issues, Nintendo Power has finally come to an end. To send this long-running periodical off in style, the Cover Critic has decided to review every single issue. Join him as he experiences every aspect of Nintendo's journey through their magazine covers.

Just when you thought Nintendo Power had rediscovered their passion for great cover design, they give us Star Trek. Like the guy who puts the red shirt on before beaming down to a hostile planet, this cover was doomed from the start.

This is nothing more than a cropped imagine from a production still. Instead of crafting models or drawing a picture, Nintendo Power opted to simply take a still image from a television show or Star Trek movie. And because magazine proportions aren't wide enough, somebody had to go in and crop out part of the Enterprise. At most, it took somebody five minutes to get the provided picture lined-up perfectly.

This is not the reason why I started reviewing Nintendo Power covers. Do you remember how amazing that Super Mario Bros. 2 art was? Or what about Mega Man II? Those are works of art. Even Nintendo Power's cheesiest covers still had a certain charm to them. This is absurdly lazy, and it makes me wonder if reviewing every Nintendo Power cover was a good idea.

It's even more frustrating when you see what could have been the cover art. F-Zero for the Super NES? Talk about a great way to follow-up that Super Mario World design. Or what about Metroid? Samus could have been the first woman on a Nintendo Power cover since September/October 1990. Even Castlevania II would have been a better choice than boring old Star Trek.=